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Tag Archives: joy
How Lovely it is in Our Own Little World
After a banquet with leaders of a school district, I was headed for the podium for my keynote when one of the administrators pulled me down slightly to share a secret. The look of concern on his face made me suspious that I was about to flash some part my anatomy I’d hadn’t planned on sharing. He said, “Don’t worry about what Mr. X said. He lives in his own little world.” I was thinking–”Don’t we all?” But I didn’t say my question out loud as this was the guy who’d hired me.
Which is more real? The world we can touch? Or the world we are responding to? I hadn’t noticed that Mr. X had said anything of note. Clearly Mr. Y had created a Mr. X in his head, and it was this co-worker he worried about.
Mr. X stated the obvious. Only, sometimes we lose touch with the fact that we are operating out of “our own little world.” Sometimes we behave as if our little world is THE world.
How can we tell when we’re behaving if our little world is all there is of reality? One way is to notice when we are stuck in push-pull accelrating arguments about something that doesn’t matter–though, of course, we are behaving if convincing other person to agree with us will change the course of world events. You can bet your EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM is running that show. It’s pretty easy to see from a factual THINKNG GUIDANCE SYSTEM perspective the long-term result you get with this kind of arguement is not what you get.
You’ve been there. You come in from work. Both of you are in a good mood and looking forward to a pleasant evening. Then one person says, I’ll really like to have pasta tonight, but you forgot to buy pasta when you went to the store.” The other says, “Pasta wasn’t on the list.” Person number one says, “You’re wrong, it was on the list.” “No, it wasn’t.”
Then we shift to second gear. 
One says, “Why are you always like this?” ((Now we’ve switched from pasta to ‘what’s wrong with the person.)) The other says, “Me? You‘re the only who always has to make a big deal of things.” ((Best defense is a good offense.)) “You’re the one who gets loud and hurts my feelings.” ((Now we call into question the other person’s love.)) “Right. And you were the one who blew up at the poor parking meter reader?” ((Now begins the exchange of real life examples of each other’s least attractive moments. That always works.))
Challenge: At least one time tomorrow …when you find yourself chastising someone for being different than you…or having a different opinion…even a different political stance or solution to the economic situation…or even chastisg a stranger for being more interested in making good time on the freeway themselves…rather than devoting their driving efforts toward making sure you have a stress free and time-efficient drive…give them PERMISSION to be different from you.
This is VERY HARD. More….
Just Stop with the Negativity
“What’s more important in determining our life?”
“The world of facts, the world we can touch? Or the world as WE HAVE DISTORTED it? The dangerous, and maybe even mean world, we are responding to in our head?”
Each of us has a chance to grow whatever parts of our world we want to grow. By paying attention to a piece of our experience, that piece takes up more and more space. Whatever we waters, grows.
I’m sitting in a restaurant booth, my roving office, and, as usual, the space behind me is filled, emptied, and refilled with more normal customers.
At least, I guess it’s normal to talk and talk and talk about what’s wrong with the world, what’s wrong with all the people in our world. But then, what am I doing here? Being negative about other people being negative. 
Recognizing the negative: 
“Why would anyone . . .? I can’t stand . . . What kind of an idiot votes for . . . Don’t they know how stupid . . . What’s wrong with someone who’d . . . 
I hate it when . . . I can’t believe anyone’s that . . . Jerk . . . Stupid . . .
I’m watering some positive today. Growing some grins. 
I’m going to be ridiculous. I’m turning laughing cartwheels (and I mean this in the most metaphorical way).
Jacking Up and Calming Down with Family
The Movie Revolt Incident: It was Friday afternoon after Thanksgiving. After lunch, a group of six laws and in-laws in my husband’s family decided to go to a popular horror movie. 
On the way, one sister-in-law announced she’d drop off the rest of us and come back to pick us up, as she did not want to see this particular movie. That’s when things began falling apart. I opted to skip the movie as well. A third expressed doubts and the pro-movie people started suggesting other movies.
Yikes. We stopped to buy a paper and look for another movie, though we three rebels were okay without one. The start time for the horror movie past, one brother-in-law threw up his hands and criticized his wife for not listening to him when he said they should bring the paper with them from home. I started apologizing for some random thing (and thinking how these family “togetherness” holidays were overrated). The original “rebel” launched in on a story from childhood when she didn’t sleep for days after a horror movie. 
Her husband added that she was “always like this with his family, but anything goes when they are with her family.”
All because one person attempted a INDIVIDUALITY move.
Thinking in terms of natural systems, each of us operates with a TOGETHERNESS force and a INDIVIDUALITY force.
What? Think of it like this when you are anxious and find relief calling a friend, your togetherness force was in affect. If you feel calmer at Thanksgiving when you escape to the back den and the football game, your individuality force is in action.
Forget the complexity. In the next several days we will look at ways to manage anxiety when our force for individuality is overwhelmed by the presence of others, each of whom INSISTS ON BEING THEMSELVES instead of only being in ways to MAKE US COMFORTABLE.
Whew. I’m tired just thinking about it. 
How Dryer Lint Can Ruin Your Life
Oh yeah. 
The accumulation of all your leftover junky thoughtstreams about your many failures and weakness. Story later today.
We’ve lived in the same house for years which has a large laundry room on the second level. The dryer, like all, has a removable lint filter (cleaned often) which has behind it a tube leading through the wall to the outside. Sometime during growing up I was told that if you didn’t keep that tube clean, it was a fire hazard. Then I’ve seen thirty foot wire brushes designed to clear that pipe. (Okay, it was that Air Mall catalog always in the front pocket of your seat with the marshmellow gun.) Then there is the occasional unexplained house fire.
Think of this pipe as a room in your brain. This room is full of bad stuff about yourself that you remind yourself about and worry that if enough lint accumulates . . . Oh, who knows? But it will be awful. So we need to worry.
On the occasion of a new dryer I called in a chimney sweep to clear out the pipe, which after all these years, had to be disgusting. I left him to pull the old dryer away from the wall and get to work.
He called me in a few minutes later.
”Clear already?” I asked.
“Yep.” He stepped to the side of the pipe hole in the wall. “Do you see that light, ma’am?”
“Yes.”
“That’s daylight. There’s no pipe here accumulating anything.”
Turns out I made the whole story up.
Why is Change so Hard?
Many people don’t have any idea what goes on when psychotherapy is effective.
Effective psychotherapy is not:
FEELING BETTER when you leave the session because you’ve “vented.” 
This kind of psychotherapy can make things worse by supporting the following misconceptions:
1. Venting improves lives and relationships.
2. The psychologist, because he can tolerate your venting, is a much better person to be emotionally intimate with than your spouse or family.
3. If people love you (spouse, family) they should put up with anything, including your venting which is laced with criticisms and claims of victimhood.
4. Having not been challenged to THINK, you leave your session more convinced than ever that YOUR MADE UP VERSION of the WORLD and EVENTS and the PEOPLE in your relationship system 
–is indeed correct.
That’s where we’re going with this. REAL CHANGE is difficult because to CHANGE your BEHAVIOR, you must first CHANGE YOUR MIND.
Really. You have to accept that what you respond to on a daily basis is not THE WORLD, but the STORY YOU’VE MADE UP ABOUT THE WORLD 
based on facts plus lots and lots of powerful ANXIETY.
Are you willing to challenge your own mindset?
Are you willing to consider that your spouse IS NOT the person you’re convinced he is? 
(Now, we’re not talking paranoia, but going the other way. Is it just possible he’s a more caring, kinder, brighter person than you ever thought possible?)
What would your life be like if you gave him the benefit of the doubt? Jumped to the best possible assumption instead of the worst? (He’s late because he’s a selfish, disorganized, uncaring person. Or add in a worse case senario that puts yourself down. He’s late because he doesn’t respect me, because I’m a doormat, because I’m not attractive.)
Yes. I know it sounds ridiculous to think a husband would not bother to be on time because his wife was not as attractive as she used to be–but somebody’s buying all those exercise machines, programed meals, four stage cosmetic routines.
A Better Relationship in One Week: Day One
“Tell me, Doc. How can I keep doing what I’m already doing, but get a DIFFERENT RESULT?”
In relationship counseling, each person comes in essentially asking, “How can I keep doing what I’m already doing–but get a different response from by chosen other?”
After thirty years of “practicing” psychology, I don’t know specifically what actions will work to improve a particular relationship. I do know which behaviors more or less guarantee failure.
Think of it as if you are standing in a clearing in a forest. Narrow trails sprout from the edges of the clearning into the trees. I don’t know which of the trails will end up where you want to be, but I do know which trails will lead you to a dead end or worse.
The first of these is the trail that reads: I can improve this relationship and my pleasure in this relationship by CONVINCING THE OTHER TO CHANGE.
Who’s in charge? Don’t you want to be in charge?
I’ve had thirty years of marriage, too. And, like any good spouse, I have applied this YOU CHANGE approach daily, even giving hour by hour suggestions. And, yet, the man goes on being himself. What’s up with that?
Where do I turn. Then, there’s the mirror. Eek! Me? I have to change me?
But that’s hard.
Challenge One: Take charge of what goes on inside your chest cavity. Your feelings. That bundle of energy or hope or whatever it is that determines the expression on our faces, the energy and optimism or lack of joy with which we approach each and every situation.